Posts by Grant McDougall
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It seems extremely unikely that the police will find the identity of “Rawshark”, the source for Hager’s book Dirty Politics and (presumably) the hacker, amid the property they have seized. Hager is meticulous about source protection and will have been especially so in this case.
The actual legal rights and wrongs of the raid aside, this was my first thoughts, too.
Hager's not silly. He must've thought that a raid was possible, so any crucial items / info sure as hell won't be at his house. They'll be safely elsewhere.
According to Stuff he's also said he'd go to jail rather than disclose his source, so they're just not going to get anything.
This will turn out to be like a smaller version of the Urewera raids: a fiasco that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars and gained SFA.
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Hard News: Home advantage, in reply to Bart Janssen,
As were numerous “tackles” during the game – most of which were ignored. That is the point.
I'm not so sure. There may've been, but the Messam one was certainly the most blatant and reckless.
Alan, that was certainly the biggest hospital pass I've ever seen from Conrad Smith, too.
The reffing and video replay may also be a red herring as to why the ABs lost.
At least twice, if not more, the ABs turned down easily kickable penalties. McCaw usually orders them to be attempted, as it's easy points - which often come in handy in tight matches.
It's very unlike him to turn down easy points, maybe he was under orders from Hansen to go for a try in such circumstances.
They were costly, poor decisions and I expect McCaw will revert to type next time.
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I broadly agree with you Russell, but you're letting Messam off far too lightly. He basically committed a shoulder charge, his arms weren't making a tackling motion, that's for sure.
It was stupid and ill-disciplined, simple as that.
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Redmer Yska's New Zealand Green (David Bateman, 1990) is a really good book, on, as it's title suggests, marijuana use and laws in Godzone.
I'd love to see it republished and updated.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Hilary Stace,
The next question was the inevitable one about Grant being gay. I recall his answer being along the lines that it was probably more of an issue for the questioner than the country.
There was a good call on this by someone on Twitter yesterday about this. It said that the supposedly homophobic West Auckland and socially-conservative South Auckland didn't have any qualms electing Chris Carter or Louisa Walls.
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Speaker: An Open Letter To David Cunliffe, in reply to Richard Aston,
its more that those long serving MPs – like Mallard – are just stale and not open to new ideas or different ways of thinking.
Fair call. There's a few stale MPs that haven't been around as Mallard, et al.
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It’s time for a new generation of leadership in the Labour party, one that is closer in both age and understanding with the people it needs to represent. It’s not just time for Grant, but also for people like me.
This is the most salient point. Labour really needs to clear out the oldies that are there on reputation, not form. The likes of Goff, King, Cunliffe and Mallard all need to retire.
There's probably a fair few backbenchers that have done nothing than make up the numbers for the past six - nice years that should hit the road as well.
It beggars belief that someone as talented as Hamish McDouall languishes at #41 on their list, while old and untalented dead wood make it back into Parliament.
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Peter's service and wake were yesterday, there was an immense amount of love and respect for him shown at both.
There was about 350 - 400 people at the service, which was led by Fr. Ivica Gregurec from St Martin's Church in North-east Valley, which Peter had begun attending a few years' ago.
The priest was fantastic, he said he had no idea of Peter's status within music circles, etc, but he very clearly "got" Peter as a person and conducted the service with much reverence and humour.
Chris Heazlewood, David Merritt, Christine Voice, Sersha Forde, Peter nephew Jack and one of his sisters paid tribute, then the Lord's Prayer and then the crowd united to read one of Peter's favourite prayers, 'Our Birth in Unity' from Prayers Of The Cosmos.
Afterwards, as many of us stood outside, a very uncanny, quite amusing moment occurred. Andrew Johns, one of the biggest names in rugby league history (in town to promote the Auckland 9s), walked out of the stadium door, past about 100 of us and not a single person either recognised or acknowledged him. As Graeme Humphreys said "That's perfect for Peter, music has triumphed over sport, for once !"
Peter's family and closest friends them buried him at Purakanui, then there was a wake at Long Beach town hall. There was a pretty decent-sized crowd there, too.
Instruments were set-up on stage and The Puddle, Chris Heazlewood and others played songs in tribute. It was a fun evening, lots of old friends catching up with each other, lots of great memories shared.
As I was leaving, Richard Langston noted the cloudless, bright, star-filled sky. We stood and gazed at it for a bit. Maybe Peter was looking down at us. If so, he would've been touched by the fondness to him we'd all talked about during the day and evening.
Richard then said a line from 'Born In The Wrong Time' as we got in the car: "We're sending him away."
We have sent him away, but we all have the memories, the stories and the music.
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Hard News: The sole party of government, in reply to Craig Ranapia,
I wonder what Louisa Wall would have to say about that, Alfie.
She is far less well-known to the general public than Dagg, Lomu and the gold medal rowing pair that also tweeted they'd voted National.
All Blacks and Olympic gold medallists receive far more media coverage than netballers (er, I think that's what she played ?).
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Regarding the Labour leadership, it needs to revert to a caucus only vote and quickly.
The "primaries" method has been a lemon, leaving no one really satisfied. It is very, very divisive, pitting caucus faction against faction against party faction against party faction.
It leaves Labour open to the "controlled by the unions" meme, rightly or wrongly.Labour needs a damn good clean-out of its old fogies. There's also far too many people on their list purely as a sop to tokenism of some kind rather than merit. Why talented people like Hamish McDouall are languishing at #40 or so beggars belief.